http://www.theage.com.au/business/families-preparing-for-dark-days-ahead-2012061...

ASK families if their finances have improved over the past year and they are likely to feel perky.

Australians gave more positive answers to that question this month than last, and more positive answers than they did a year ago.

Ask about the economy and their answers are little changed over recent months.
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But ask about family finances over the next year and the answers are so overwhelmingly negative you need to go right back to 1990 to find feelings so bad.

Just 18.5 per cent of those surveyed in this month's Westpac Melbourne Institute consumer survey expect their finances to improve in the year ahead, while 32.2 per cent expect them to get worse.

The gap - 13.7 percentage points - is the widest since the eve of Australia's last recession, November 1990.

''This is strikingly negative,'' says Westpac economist Matthew Hassan. ''To be more negative about future family finances now than during the global financial crisis is quite surprising.''

Mr Hassan thinks anxiety about the carbon tax is part of the explanation and points to special questions asked about perceptions of news.

A relatively high proportion of those surveyed reported hearing news about tax. The proportion who found the news positive were dwarfed by the proportion who found it negative.

Perceptions of international economic news were even worse. Almost everyone who reported hearing news from overseas found it negative.

Treasurer Wayne Swan will tell a Euromoney bond forum in Sydney this morning the most immediate source of uncertainty is the outcome of the Greek elections at the weekend.

He will say there is no escaping the conclusion that Europe has a long and painful road ahead, with the most likely scenario rolling crises and volatility.

With the global outlook uncertain and markets punishing nations without a credible fiscal plan, it is ''critical'' Australia maintains budget discipline.

The overall Westpac consumer confidence failed to bounce after the Reserve Bank cut interest rates earlier this month, with sentiment climbing a barely measurable 0.4 per cent, to be down 5.6 per cent over the year.

Views about whether now is a good time to spend improved. Australians were 6 per cent more likely to feel it was a good time to buy a car as opposed to March, and 2 per cent likely to believe it was a good time to buy a house.

What Keating wanted to be in Australia was not just the Treasurer or the Prime Minister, he wanted the position of President

And the answer to you ideas here in this post. no things haven't improved for the average Australian Battler, we did have the good financial years of the Howard Lib /Nats, but if you wern't able to capatelize your inverstments during thows years, then you are in exactly the same position as you were in the keating years, with the recession we had to have.

darkhall67 wrote on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 9:55am:



GDP has doubled during the Howard years so we have captured it

Nobody can undermine confidence like a Liberal opposition.

10%+ misery guts greens supporters who see the bad in everything, and prefer the country to be dry so they can say 'told ya so'.

I really get sicked and tired of negative people from all walks of life and politics,  I tell them to stfu !

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 4:43pm:


Except that you don't live here and you don't pay tax here so it isn't your money is it?

Idiot. Did you think you'd be allowed to get away with that without being picked up on it?